What should we bring?
Ahead of the meeting do some prep collating a small set of agreed KPIs. The point of the regular reviews is to help your team spot movement in the right direction over time, rather than in a single point in time. These measures will likely include:
- Trends in traffic for your main pages/sections
- Conversion related KPIs (enquiries, sign ups, downloads, donations etc)
- Form completion rates and drop off
- Booking, registration or purchase rates (if relevant)
- Slow pages or other noticeable technical issues
- Any goal related data that has been agreed to track
It’s important to note that this isn’t just about looking at the numbers, it’s about knowing the context. For example, if there has been a drop in traffic you need to know if this is impacting your key pages that help drive outcomes. An increase in page views alone doesn’t impact anything if your enquiries, bookings or form completions have remained static.
If your team aren’t able to agree on what to track, then this is a good indicator that your reporting is not in place. Focus on a few core KPIs and track them for the next few months. You can always drill into more detail later.
What should we discuss?
A productive review will focus on what the data means for the website. Rather than focusing on statement such as “our traffic has dropped” you should be focussing on:
- What pages have changed?
- Has this impacted any key journeys?
- Why has it changed? Is it content related, search related, form related or technical?
- Is it a one off or is there a trend?
This sets the stage for a better conversation about whether a drop in engagement is due to content, search or just general noise. Any issues users are having should also be discussed. If they are struggling to complete a booking form, login section or content pathway, or if you are seeing high drop off on pages that look fine then start to explore potential issues as a team to highlight where the problems may reside.
This approach helps your team to look at the whole journey a user rather than at intermediary steps within it. The GOV.UK’s guidance on mapping a user’s whole problem is a useful way of ensuring that your team is focussing on the users overal experience rather than on the individual destinations along the way. This helps to avoid blinkered analysis and insight from creeping into your decision making process, and ensures your team have a broad view of how your site is being used and where any issues may lie.
If a page is performing badly the issue may be upstream in the user journey from that page or it may be that it isn’t signposting users to the next step on their path. This is why a rounder discussion and analysis is so important.
What should we prioritise?
Not every issue will need to be acted upon straight away. The monthly review should help you decide what needs to be acted on and what can be added to your backlog. A good approach is to split your issues into 4 categories:
- Fix Now
Anything that is blocking you or your users. Broken forms, payment failures, login issues or misleading content. - Next
Anything that is important but not urgent. Improving a key landing page, improving analytics events or improving a poor content section. - Monitor
Anything that we want to keep an eye on for the next month. - Later
Valid ideas but not relevant to this cycle, budget or resource.
This may seem like an obvious approach but it will help you focus the meeting on the most important actions and avoid discussing a long list of less important concerns or issues. Any issues that matter should be in one of these categories. If they’re not they’re just going to be a discussion point that won’t ultimately lead to any improvement or longer term value.
Accessibility issues should also be considered. UCL have some good guidance for forms and survey tools which your team can use to ensure that your forms are accessible from both a toolset and a design perspective . This can be useful during your review to remind your team that just because a form works it doesn’t mean the form is usable. Potentiall issues could be due to the field labelling, layout and structure, validation, or the actual wording of the form.
Who is responsible?
Every issue that comes up during your review should have an owner, action and deadline. If not it will likely come back next month. The owner may not always be a developer. Some issues will require changes to content, checking the data, accessibility or a decision from a senior stakeholder. The main thing is that someone has ownership.
Your actions should be clear and unambiguous. For example:
- Update copy on the page to reduce form confusion
- Check the enquiry button is being tracked in analytics
- Check the login stage with accessibility in mind
- Fix broken redirects and re-test the journey
- Postpone the redesign until next planning cycle – and note the reason
It’s important to note that postponing an issue isn’t a bad thing. Often it will be the right thing to do. The key thing is to note why you are doing this so it doesn’t become a discussion point in 4 weeks time.
How do we avoid re-arguing the same points?
Having a simple shared document will help you avoid this. If you’re only noting “discussed homepage performance” then you’ll be wasting time discussing the same thing again. Your notes should include:
- What has been decided
- What hasn’t been decided
- Who the owner is
- When it should be reviewed
This doesn’t need to be an advanced system. A shared document or task board will usually suffice. Having this in place will mean that your monthly meetings will be much more effective because they’ll begin from the last set of decisions. This will help the team focus on new information rather than arguing about the same page/form/report, and help your team build momentum over time.
It will also help you identify any patterns. If the same issue keeps coming up for 3 months then it’s not just an action point. It means the issue hasn’t been resolved. You may need to consider a better technical solution, clearer content decision or proper review of how the site is being maintained.
When should we involve specialists?
Some review meetings will raise questions that can’t be quickly fixed by your team. Often this will be around analytics set up, accessible forms, login friction, search visibility and maintenance decisions.
This might not mean you need to run a full project. It could simply mean that you need someone to decipher the data, properly test the journey or make a decision on whether the site needs support, audit or improvement plan.
Many teams find having an external partner helps them. An expert external voice can help make the meeting more productive by providing tangible actions for the recurring issues.
If you find that your monthly reviews are getting stuck in the same issues with the website, Pedalo can help provide clarity with a support, audit or improvement plan.